David Paterson is Hearing Tax Rumors

ALBANY—David Paterson said there are rumors of another millionaires’ tax out there.

“I thought there would be some modification, but I heard a rumor yesterday that some of my colleagues are talking about another millionaires’ tax, and that would demonstrate, I would say, a completely addictive personality,” Paterson told John Gambling on WOR. “The rumor isn’t traceable to anybody, but someone just mentioned that to me yesterday and I thought, ‘I can’t believe, at this point, that we never get it.'”

Yesterday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver–who pushed to include a tax on high earners in last year’s budget–said on a different radio program that he saw the state’s problems as a “crisis of spending” and said it must be curtailed.

The governor’s comment came as he and Gambling were discussing the coming new year, and how New York got into the fiscal situation it is in. Gambling made a metaphor to a drug addict, which Paterson continued.

“Well how did we get in this situation in the first place? We got there by, not being honest. By taxing the public when we needed more money and then when we were unable to tax anymore borrowing,” Paterson said. “The public has figured out this borrowing frenzy that our country has fallen into. As a government we can’t criticize any individuals who have borrowed themselves into insolvency because government has done the same thing.”